Review: Extraordinary X-Men #1

The X-Men regroup after the end of Secret Wars this week in Extraordinary X-Men #1, by Jeff Lemire and Humberto Ramos.

After the assumedly catastrophic events of Secret Wars (we still have yet to see what actually happens) the mutant race is once again facing extinction. And once again Cyclops is public enemy number one. Storm must gather together a team to defend her people and Charles Xavier’s dream of peace.

To this end, Lemire gives us an issue that reads like the opening half hour of an Expendables movie, albeit with far more nauseating emotional turmoil. Storm and Ice-Man travel the globe trying to recruit all those X-Men possessed of pasts steeped in misery and pain. Colossus is a farmer now, and quite happy by the looks of it. That won’t do for a second. His sister shows up instigating a horrid flashback where a teenage Piotr cries in a barn after his father beats him up. That’s just what Colossus needed, a new layer of melancholy.

Jean Grey, the young time displaced Jean that is, has escaped the drudgery of endless battle and decided to go to college. Storm and Ice-Man take it upon themselves to ruin that for her. This Jean has seen all the desolation her future holds but God forbid the X-Men let her try and avoid it. When Jean refuses, Storm makes her feel about one inch tall. Ororo comes off very poorly in this book.

Then there is the small matter of the continued, horrific portrayal of Cyclops. We don’t actually see what he has done to create the current Mutant sterilising situation, but it is something to do with releasing the Terrigan mists. We are however assured it was his fault,and we should hate him. Whatever you do, do not read Uncanny X-Men #600 first (also released this week) which wraps up BMB’s run on the title. In that book, Bendis does a beautiful job of giving Scott some small modicum of redemption after years of brutal treatment at the hands of a series of writers. That touching moment is bull-dozed in the five minutes it takes to read Extraordinary X-Men.

There isn’t anything about Ramos’s art that can be said that hasn’t already been discussed at length every time he takes over a book. It is marmite pencilling. You love it or you hate it. In a perfect world Ramos would have taken over a X-Men title possessed of a little levity. His exaggerated facial features and overall fun style would have suited that, like it did Spiderman. Sadly he’s taken over a Mutant version of Le Miserable. He feels mismatched with the book.

Extraordinary X-Men seems to be a return to the dark days of the early and mid 90’s, when the X-Men spent issue after issue enduring unbearable emotional distress. There is an unavoidable sense of ‘been there done that’ when reading it. We have done the ‘mutant race on the brink of extinction’ bit. We’ve done the ‘Cyclops is a total arse’ bit. We’ve done the ‘world that hates and fears them bit. It has all been done before. For a title that exists under the ‘All new all Different’ banner, that demoralising fact is inexcusable.